Asherah

Asherah (/ˈæʃərə/),[a] in ancient Semitic religion, is a mother goddess who appears

Asherah
in a number of ancient sources. She appears in Akkadian writings by the name of
‫אֲשֵׁ ָרה‬
Ašratu(m), and in Hittite as Aserdu(s) or Asertu(s). Asherah is generally
considered identical with theUgaritic goddess ʼAṯirat. Goddess of motherhood and
fertility
Lady of the Sea

Contents
Signifiance and roles
In Ugaritic texts
In Egyptian sources
In Israel and Judah
In Arabia
See also
Notes
References
Sources
External links
Asherah
Israelite

Signifiance and roles

Asherah is identified as the queen consort of the Sumerian god Anu, and Ugaritic
El,[1] the oldest deities of their respective pantheons,[2] as well as Yahweh, the god
of Israel and Judah.[3] This role gave her a similarly high rank in the Ugaritic
pantheon.[4] Despite her association with Yahweh in extra-biblical sources,
Deuteronomy 12 has Yahweh commanding the destruction of her shrines so as to
maintain purity of his worship.[5] The name Dione, which like 'Elat means
"Goddess", is clearly associated with Asherah in the Phoenician History of
Sanchuniathon, because the same common epithet ('Elat) of "the Goddess par
excellence" was used to describe her at Ugarit.[6] The Book of Jeremiah, written
circa 628 BC, possibly refers to Asherah when it uses the title "Queen of Heaven"[b]
in Jeremiah 7:16-18[7] and Jeremiah 44:17-19, 25.[8]
Major cult Middle-East
In Ugaritic texts center Formerly Jerusalem
Symbol Asherah pole
Sources from before 1200 BC almost always credit Athirat with her full title rabat
ʾAṯirat yammi, "Lady Athirat of the Sea" or as more fully translated "she who treads
Consort El (Ugaritic religion)
on the sea".[c] This occurs 12 times in the Baʿal Epic alone.[9] The name is
Elkunirsa (Hittite
ʾaṯr
understood by various translators and commentators to be from the Ugaritic root
religion)
"stride", cognate with the Hebrew root ʾšr, of the same meaning. There she appears
Yahweh (Israelite
to champion Yam, god of the sea, in his struggle with Ba'al.
religion)
Her other main divine epithet was qaniyatu ʾilhm[d] which may be translated as "the Amurru (Amorite
creatrix of the Gods (Elohim)".[9] In those texts, Athirat is the consort of the god El; religion)
there is one reference to the 70 sons of Athirat, presumably the same as the 70 sons Offspring 70 sons (Ugaritic
of El. religion)
77 or 88 sons (Hittite
She is also called Elat,[e] "Goddess", the feminine form of El (compare Allat) and
religion)
Qodesh, "holiness".[f] Athirat in Akkadian texts appears as Ashratum (or, Antu), the
wife of Anu, the God of Heaven. In contrast, ʿAshtart is believed to be linked to the
Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar who is sometimes portrayed as the daughter of Anu while in Ugaritic myth, ʿAshtart is one of the
daughters of El, the West Semitic counterpart of Anu.

Among the Hittites this goddess appears as Asherdu(s) or Asertu(s), the consort of Elkunirsa ("El the Creator of Earth") and mother
of either 77 or 88 sons. Among theAmarna letters a King of the Amorites is named Abdi-Ashirta, "Servant of Asherah".[10]

In Egyptian sources
Beginning during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, a Semitic goddess named Qudshu ("Holiness") appears prominently. Some think
this is Athirat/Ashratu under her Ugaritic name. This Qudshu seems not to be either ʿAshtart or ʿAnat as both those goddesses appear
under their own names and with quite different iconography and appear in at least one pictorial representation along with Qudshu.

But in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods in Egypt there was a strong tendency towards syncretism of goddesses and
Athirat/Ashratum then seems to have disappeared, at least as a prominent goddess under a recognizable name.

In Israel and Judah

Between the 10th century BC and the beginning of their exile in 586 BC,
polytheism was normal throughout Israel;[11] it was only after the exile that
worship of Yahweh alone became established, and possibly only as late as
the time of the Maccabees (2nd century BC) that monotheism became
universal among the Jews.[12][13] Some biblical scholars believe that
Asherah at one time was worshipped as the consort of Yahweh, the national
God of Israel.[12][14][15] There are references to the worship of numerous
gods throughout Kings: Solomon builds temples to many gods and Josiah is
reported as cutting down the statues of Asherah in the temple Solomon built
for Yahweh (2 Kings 23:14). Josiah's grandfather Manasseh had erected one
such statue (2 Kings 21:7[16] ).

Further evidence includes, for example, an 8th-century combination of

iconography and inscriptions discovered at Kuntillet Ajrud in the northern
Sinai desert[17] where a storage jar shows three anthropomorphic figures and Image on pithos sherd found at Kuntillet
Ajrud below the inscription "Yahweh and his
several inscriptions.[18][19] The inscriptions found refer not only to Yahweh
Asherah"
but to El and Baal, and two include the phrases "Yahweh of Samaria and his
Asherah" and "Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah."[20] The references to
Samaria (capital of the kingdom of Israel) and Teman (in Edom) suggest that Yahweh had a temple in Samaria, while raising
questions about the relationship between Yahweh and Kaus, the national god of Edom.[21] The "Asherah" is most likely a cultic
object, although the relationship of this object (a stylised tree perhaps) to Yahweh and to the goddess Asherah, consort of El, is
unclear.[22] It has been suggested that the Israelites might have considered Asherah as a consort of Baal due to the anti-Asherah
ideology which was influenced by the Deuteronomistic History at the later period of Monarchy.[23] In another inscription called
"Yahweh and his Asherah", there appears a cow feeding its calf.[24] If Asherah is to be associated with Hathor/Qudshu, it can then be
assumed that it is the cow that is being referred to as Asherah.
William Dever's book Did God Have a Wife? adduces further archaeological evidence—for instance, the many female figurines
unearthed in ancient Israel, (known as Pillar-Base Figurines)—as supporting the view that in Israelite folk religion of the monarchal
period, Asherah functioned as a goddess and consort of Yahweh and was worshiped as the Queen of Heaven, for whose festival the
Hebrews baked small cakes.

The word Asherah is translated in Greek as alsos, grove, or alse, groves, or occasionally by dendra, trees; Vulgate in Latin
provided lucus or nemus, a grove or a wood (thus KJV Bible uses grove or groves with the consequent loss of Asherah's name and
knowledge of her existence to English language readers of the Bible over some 400 years).[25] The association of Asherah with trees
in the Hebrew Bible is very strong. For example, she is found under trees (1K 14:23; 2K 17:10) and is made of wood by human
beings (1K 14:15, 2K 16:3-4). Trees described as being an asherah or part of an asherah include grapevines, pomegranates, walnuts,
myrtles, and willows (Danby:1933:90,176).

Some scholars have found an early link between Asherah and Eve, based upon the coincidence of their common title as "the mother
of all living" in Genesis 3:20[26] through the identification with the Hurrian mother goddess Hebat.[27][28] Asherah was also given
the title Chawat from which the nameHawwah in Aramaic and the biblical nameEve are derived.[29]

Asherah poles, which were sacred trees or poles, are mentioned many times in the Hebrew Bible. The Asherah pole was prohibited
[30]
by the Deuteronomic Code which commanded "You shall not plant any treeas an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God".

In Arabia
A stele, now located at the Louvre, discovered by Charles Huber in 1883 in the ancient oasis of Tema,[g] northwestern Arabia, and
believed to date to the time of Nabonidus's retirement there in 549 BC, bears an inscription in Aramaic which mentions Ṣalm of
Maḥram, Shingala, and Ashira as the gods of Tema.

This Ashira might be Athirat/Asherah. Since Aramaic has no way to indicate Arabic th, corresponding to the Ugaritic th
(transliterated as ṯ), if this is the same deity, it is not clear whether the name would be an Arabian reflex of the Ugaritic Athirat or a
later borrowing of the Hebrew/Canaanite Asherah.[31]

The Arabic root ʼṯr is similar in meaning to the Hebrew indicating "to tread" used as a basis to explain the name of Ashira as "lady of
the sea", specially that the Arabic root ymm also means "sea".[32] It has also been recently suggested that the goddess name Athirat
might be derived from the passive participle form, referring to "one followed by (the gods)", that is, "pro-genitress or originatress",
[33]
corresponding with Asherah's image as 'the mother of the gods' in Ugaritic literature.

See also
Shekhinah
Khirbet el-Qom
Al-Lat
List of fertility deities
List of Canaanite deities
Semitic neopaganism
Anat

Notes
a. Hebrew: ‫' אֲשֵׁ ָרה‬Ášērāh; Ugaritic: 'Aṯirat
b. Hebrew: ‫ְמלֶ כֶ ת הַ שָּׁ מַ יִ ם‬
c. Ugaritic , rbt ʾaṯrt ym
d. Ugaritic , qnyt ʾlm
e. Ugaritic , ilt
f. Ugaritic , qdš
 g. Modern Tayma – Arabic: ‫ﺗﻴﻤﺎء‬

References
1. "Asherah" in The New Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th edn., 1992, Vol. 1, pp.
623-4.
2. Oxford Companion to World Mythology, p.32 (https://books.google.com/books?id=kQFtlva3HaYC&lpg=P
A32&dq=At
hirat%20wife%20of%20Anu&pg=PA32#v=onepage&q=Athirat%20wife%20of%20Anu&f=false)
3. Niehr, Herbert (1995). "The Rise of YHWH inthe Judahite and Israelite Religion".The Triumph of the Elohim: From
Yahwisms to Judaisms. Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA: Eerdmans. pp. 54, 57.ISBN 0-8028-4161-9.
4. Binger 1997, p. 74
5. Deuteronomy 12: 3-4
6. Olyan, Saul M. (1988),Asherah and the cult of Yahweh in Israel, Scholars Press, p. 79,ISBN 9781555402549
7. ". . . pray thou not for this people . . . The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead
[their] dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink ferings
of to other gods, that they may
provoke me to anger." (King James Version)
8. Rainer, Albertz (2010), "Personal piety",in Stavrakopoulou, Francesca; Barton, John,Religious Diversity in Ancient
Israel and Judah (reprint ed.), Continuum International Publishing Group, pp. 135–146(at 143),
ISBN 9780567032164
9. Gibson, J. C. L.; Driver, G. R. (1978), Canaanite Myths and Legends, T. & T. Clark, ISBN 9780567023513
10. Noted by Raphael Patai, "The Goddess Asherah",Journal of Near Eastern Studies24.1/2 (1965: 37–52), p. 39.
11. Finkelstein, Israel, and Silberman, Neil Asher
, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and
the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, Simon & Schuster, 2002, pp. 241–42.
12. "BBC Two - Bible's Buried Secrets, Did God Have a Wife?" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zw3fl). BBC. 21
December 2011. Retrieved 4 July 2012.
13. Quote from the BBC documentary (prof. Herbert Niehr): "Between the 10th century and the beginning of their exile in
586 there was polytheism as normal religion all throughout Israel; only afterwards things begin to change and very
slowly they begin to change. I would say it [the sentence "Jews were monotheists" - n.n.] is only correct for the last
centuries, maybe only from the period of the Maccabees, that means the second century BC, so in the time of Jesus
of Nazareth it is true, but for the time before it, it is not true."
14. Wesler, Kit W. (2012). An Archaeology of Religion(https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0qSExw3tH1oC&pg=P A193
&dq=Dever+2005+Asherah+yahweh&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ukcHVK7SIsvV atjDgeAG&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&
q=Dever%202005%20Asherah%20yahweh&f=false) . University Press of America. p. 193.ISBN 978-0761858454.
Retrieved 3 September 2014.
15. Mills, Watson, ed. (31 Dec 1999).Mercer Dictionary of the Bible(https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=goq0VWw9rG
IC&pg=PA494&dq=Asherah+consort+yahweh&hl=en&sa=X&ei=10cHVPuBKZKUat25gcgK&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v
=onepage&q=Asherah%20consort%20yahweh&f=false)(Reprint ed.). Mercer University Press. p. 494.ISBN 978-
0865543737.
16. "Genesis Chapter 1 (NKJV)"(https://www.blueletterbible.org/search/search.cfm?Criteria=Asherah&t=NKJV#s=s_pri
mary_0_1). Blue Letter Bible.
17. Ze'ev Meshel, Kuntillet 'Ajrud: An Israelite Religious Center in Northern Sinai(http://www.penn.museum/documents/p
ublications/expedition/PDFs/20-4/Meshel.pdf), Expedition 20 (Summer 1978), pp. 50–55
18. Dever 2005
19. Hadley 2000, pp. 122–136
20. Bonanno, Anthony (1986).Archaeology and Fertility Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean: Papers Presented at the First
International Conference on Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean, University of Malta, 2–5 September 1985
(ht
tps://books.google.com/books?id=uuKfXsvfr2YC) . John Benjamins Publishing. p. 238.ISBN 9789060322888.
Retrieved 10 March 2014.
21. Keel, Othmar; Uehlinger, Christoph (1998). Gods, Goddesses, And Images of God(https://books.google.com/books?
id=NjYAWXO-jdAC). Bloomsbury Academic. p. 228.ISBN 9780567085917. Retrieved 10 March 2014.
22. Keel, Othmar; Uehlinger, Christoph (1998). Gods, Goddesses, And Images of God(https://books.google.com/books?
id=NjYAWXO-jdAC). Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 232–233.ISBN 9780567085917. Retrieved 10 March 2014.
23. Sung Jin Park, "The Cultic Identity of Asherah in Deuteronomistic Ideology of Israel,"
Zeitschrift für die
Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 123/4 (2011): 553–564.
24. Dever 2005, p. 163.
25. "Asherah" (http://www.asphodel-long.com/html/asherah.html). www.asphodel-long.com. Retrieved 2016-02-14.
26. Jenny Kein, (2000)"Reinstating the Divine W
oman in Judaism" (Universal Publishers; 1 edition (January 15, 2000)
27. Bach, Alice Women in the Hebrew Bible Routledge; 1 edition (3 Nov 1998)ISBN 978-0-415-91561-8 p.171
28. Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient iTmes, Princeton University Press, 1992 p.270.
29. Dever 2005.
30. Deut 16:21 (https://www.esv.org/Deuteronomy+16:21)
31. Baruch Margalit, "The Meaning and Significance of Asherah,"Vetus Testamentum 40 (July 1990): 264–97.
32. Lucy Goodison and Christine Morris,Ancient Goddesses: Myths and Evidence(Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1998), 79.
33. Sung Jin Park, "Short Notes on the Etymology of Asherah",Ugarit Forschungen 42 (2010): 527–534.

Sources
Barker, Margaret (2012), The Mother of the Lord Volume 1: The Lady in the Temple, T & T Clark,
ISBN 9780567528155
Binger, Tilde (1997), Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old e Tstament, Continuum International
Publishing Group, ISBN 9781850756378
Dever, William G. (2005), Did God Have A Wife?: Archaeology And Folk Religion In Ancient Israel , Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing,ISBN 9780802828521
Hadley, Judith M (2000), The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: The Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess ,
University of Cambridge Oriental publications, 57, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521662352
Kien, Jenny (2000), Reinstating the Divine Woman in Judaism, Universal Publishers,ISBN 9781581127638
Long, Asphodel P. (1993), In a Chariot Drawn by Lions: The Search for the Female in Deity , Crossing Press,
ISBN 9780895945754
Myer, Allen C. (2000), "Asherah",Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, Amsterdam University Press
Park, Sung Jin (2010). "Short Notes on the Etymology of Asherah".Ugarit Forschungen. 42: 527–534.
Park, Sung Jin (2011)."The Cultic Identity of Asherah in Deuteronomistic Ideology of Israel" . Zeitschrift für die
Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. 123 (4): 553–564. doi:10.1515/zaw.2011.036.
Patai, Raphael (1990),The Hebrew Goddess, Jewish folklore and anthropology., Wayne State University Press,
ISBN 9780814322710
Reed, William Laforest (1949),The Asherah in the Old Testament, Texas christian university press,
OCLC 491761457
Taylor, Joan E (1995), The Asherah, the Menorah and the Sacred T ree, Journal for the study of the Old Testament.
no. 66: University of Sheffield, Dept. of Biblical Studies, pp. 29–54, ISSN 0309-0892, OCLC 88542166
Wiggins, Steve A (1993),A Reassessment of 'Asherah': A Study according to the extual T Sources of the First Two
Millennia B.C.E, Alter Orient und Altes Testament, Bd. 235., Verlag Butzon & Bercker, ISBN 9783788714796

External links

Asherah
Asphodel P. Long, The Goddess in Judaism – An Historical Perspective
Asherah, the Tree of Life and the Menorah
Jewish Encyclopedia: Asherah
Rabbi Jill Hammer, An Altar of Earth: Reflections on Jews, Goddesses and the Zohar
University of Birmingham: Deryn Guest: Asherahat Archive.org
Lilinah biti-Anat, Qadash Kinahnu Deity Temple "Room One, Major Canaanite Deities"

Kuntillet inscriptions
 Jacques Berlinerblau, "Official religion and popular religion in pre-Exilic ancient Israel"(Commentary on Yahweh's
Asherah.)
ANE: Kuntillet bibliography
Jeffrey H. Tigay, "A Second Temple Parallel to the Blessings from Kuntillet Ajrud" (University of Pennsylvania)
(This
equates Asherah with an asherah.)

Israelite
David Steinberg, Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel

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